The journal is owned and overseen by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) and was established in 1916 by Woodson and Jesse E. Moorland.

The journal was and is a publication of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, an organization founded by Woodson.

[4] The journal was the dominant scholarly source for the study of African American history at the time of its inception, because there were no other such texts.

While the journal mainly published the work of black authors and encouraged their academic success, it was also an outlet for white scholars who had different views than their counterparts.

"He didn't just see a need, he moved to fill the need", said Carol Adams, CEO of the Chicago Museum of African American History.

Black History Month is recognized every year in February, still covering the week of Frederick Douglass's and Abraham Lincoln's birthdays as Woodson originally intended.

[4] Since its conception in 1926, the Journal of African American History has featured and published the work of notable scholars including Benjamin Quarles, John Hope Franklin, and W. E. B.

[5] Jesse E. Moorland and activist Arthur Spingarn also made notable contributions to the study of black history by, among other things, donating novels and manuscripts to the library at Howard University.

In 2018, the editor V. P. Franklin, who began working for his alma mater, Harvard University along with Harvard's Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, a well-known historian in African-American studies, signed a deal with the University of Chicago Press to have it publish the journal on behalf of the ASLAH.